The "smart" guys on business TV

Nicholas Rowell writes in The Financial Times about the differences in business journalism on TV between Europe and the United States, and a YouTube business news sensation.

Rowell writes, “Yet business TV has always had rough edges. The standard formula for reporters on screen has long been two-thirds smooth, one-third rough. Among national markets reporters on European business TV, for example, there is Italian and French smoothness, but German presentation… well, it’s schoolmistressy.

“On US business TV, there is harsh medicine. Take Art Cashin, business TV’s oldest regular daily spokesman and still a floor manager on the New York Stock Exchange. On screen, Art looks like a policeman at a crime scene determined to deal thoroughly with press enquiries. Camera-friendly studio presenters don’t seem to get why he’s so po-faced. Relax, this is just business TV, they seem to say. That’s not the point, Art seems to respond, I’m trying to pass on my knowledge to you, and you just keep worrying about the camera. I think Art keeps the straightest face in the market because he knows that educating people about markets is a serious business.

“The trader e-mailed me a day after Hugh’s appearance with another link. On a YouTube video showing a whiteboard filled with technical analysis, out jumps a slightly bug-eyed, hair-gelled, brown-nylon-jacketed figure. Meet Oscar –- trader, technical analyst and maker of 300 YouTube videos. Oscar looks like the traders who drift in and out of shot at the Chicago trading exchange, shouting over the presenter. Indeed, on his videos, Oscar does not stop shouting. Yet for the rest of the day, every day, he is in front of his site’s chatroom webcams. Explaining technical charts. Listening to traders’ questions. Showing traders his ‘homework’. Reminding them to do their ‘homework’. Getting insulted. Telling traders to stick to their trading plans. Getting insulted again.

“Hits on Oscar’s channel are on average up fivefold over the year and it turns out that the biggest American business TV channel was interested in him. There was talk of meetings, there was talk of pilots, there was even talk of him being the next Jim Cramer, CNBC’s shouting guru. At any rate, the channel didn’t take him. Maybe because Oscar is in the typical second chapter of American life. Maybe because he lives in Las Vegas, where smartness is not a way of life. In any case, Oscar isn’t another Cramer. He is from a different generation.”

Read more here.